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Friday, April 1, 2011

Studies Show That Fat Cells Die And Are Replaced

I was wondering what happens to fat cells when you lose weight and I really did not know who to ask. So I asked Google Search. The funny thing is he knew the answer immediately!  All types of answers came up but the one that really got my attention was one titled " Studies Show That Fat Cells Die And Are Replaced " it sounded interesting so I continued to read.

The article began by explaining that every year regardless of how fat, obese or thin a person is, whether you lose weight or gain weight that year, 10% of your fat cells die that year! WOW! This was just the news that I have been waiting for! But wait... There's more, and every year when those fat cells die they are replaced by new fat cells. ( reported by Swedish researchers). Wait! Hold on a minute! First you give us the good news that our fat cells die at a rate of 10% per year, then you hit us in the belly with the news that we gain new fat cells to replace those that die. What? So it ain't so! But it is! And guess what? Those new fat cells are hungry! They are new and improved fat cells and they want to make their mark in the fat cell world! They want to be the biggest and baddest fat cell out there!
The study continued to state that the number of fat cells that we have throughout adulthood remains the same year after year regardless of our weight loss or weight gain. Even when they studied people who had gastric bypass surgery and had lost 100 or more pounds! They still had the same number of fat cells in their body!

So the question is why? Obesity investigators say the study raises many questions.
1. What determines how many fat cells are in a persons body?
2. When is that number determined?
3. Is there a way to intervene so that the amount of fat cells could be reduced in adulthood?
4. Could obesity be treated by making fat cells die quicker than they are born?

The answer to all of these questions is they simply don't know. They can study and speculate but there is no concrete answers to these thought provoking questions. What they have stated is, Even if scientists knew how the fat cell system worked, it was not clear that it would be safe or effective to treat obesity by intervening. One of the hard lessons of the past couple of decades has been that the body has redundant controls to maintain weight. “I suspect that the body’s regulation of weight is so complex that if you intervene at this site, something else is going to happen to neutralize this intervention,” Dr. Salans said.

There was a time a few decades ago, before the current interest in how the brain regulates how much is eaten, when obesity researchers spent all their time studying and discussing fat cells. Investigators discovered that fat people had more fat cells than thin people and that fat cells shrank with weight loss and bulged with weight gain.

Dr. Jules Hirsch of New York, who did many of the initial studies with humans, said he started because he could not understand why people who lost weight regained. “They should have been cured,” Dr. Hirsch said. After all, he said, if you cut out a fatty tumor, the fat does not grow back. Why was fat lost from dieting different?

The result was the fat cell hypothesis, a notion that obsessed researchers. Fat cells, the hypothesis said, are laid down early in life and after that, they can change only in size, not in number. When people lose weight and their fat cells shrink, that creates a signal to fill the cells again, making people regain. “We didn’t know a lot about obesity, so that was what we talked about,” Dr. Flier said.

What I learned about fat cells reading this article is that no one, not the doctors, researchers, or the medical investigators can figure out the life span of a fat cell or why you can't just get rid of them. Regardless of how much weight you lose in your lifetime, or how many weight loss surgeries someone has, the bottom line is the same. But I do know that the God of this universe created me and all other living things and he uniquely designed each of us so that we can live, grow and thrive with fat cells. My goal is to just have more fat cells that aren't so fat any more. So, I will continue down this path on a journey to a new me and see if I can run into some skinny fat cells down the road!

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